Hard Core Logo

Imagine Spinal Tap with a straight face — sparing, deadpan humor, bad rock music (but not laughably bad), and the painful, crusty descent into dissolution and breakup — and you have Hard Core Logo. It doesn't sound terribly fun, does it? This Canadian film is a serious faux documentary covering an aging hardcore band on an ill-fated reunion tour across the lonesome stretches of Western Canada. Director Bruce MacDonald finely tensions interpersonal nuance and documentary distance so that any laughter, when it arrives, is uneasy. The documentary guise is an effective and convincing frame, although the question of “is it real or is it Memorex” gets answered in a hallucinatory romp near the movie's end. Satire leaves the viewer stabilized, but Hard Core Logo is an unsettling tale whose effectiveness is hindered only by its subject matter. Does anybody out there care about the plight of middle-aged punk rockers suffering from arrested development?